The present invention relates to systems that report potential emergency situations, including emergency telephone call (911) systems and, more particularly, to systems that provide secondary notifications of emergency calls to third parties.
Emergency operators can efficiently dispatch appropriate first responders, such as emergency medical technicians (EMTs), police officers or firefighters, as a result of emergency calls. However, when an emergency call is placed by a person who is located on an institutional campus, the campus's safety organization is typically not notified of the emergency until after the first responders are dispatched or reach the site of the emergency. Often, the campus safety organization is never notified. This is unfortunate, inasmuch as the campus safety organization is usually well positioned to quickly respond to an emergency and may be able to reach the site of the emergency before the first responders. Moreover, the campus safety organization typically has current and detailed knowledge of the campus's (sometimes frequently changing) geography, buildings and other infrastructure, and this information can help the first responders more expeditiously reach the site of the emergency or render assistance once they arrive.
Even if a campus's safety organization were notified of an emergency, the campus safety organization cannot establish voice communication with the caller who placed the emergency call, because no interference with emergency calls is permitted. Thus, the campus safety organization cannot gather any information about the emergency from the caller, even though such information might be useful in assisting with the current emergency or in preventing other emergencies.
Emergency calls are increasingly being placed from wireless telephones. Emergency operators are generally expert at dispatching appropriate emergency services, however when handling emergency calls from mobile telephones, the emergency operators sometimes must rely on callers to orally describe the locations of the emergencies. A mandate to automatically provide emergency operators with locations of mobile emergency callers precipitated installation of improved infrastructure, which removed some of the need for these oral descriptions. However, the accuracy of this automatically-provided location information is limited and varies depending on the type of system used to ascertain the location of the calling handset, atmospheric conditions, et cetera. Furthermore, the location information does not include vertical position information. Vertical position information can be very important, especially when emergency calls are placed from multi-story buildings, such as buildings on college or corporate campuses or in urban areas.
An emergency operator may require an oral description of the nature of an emergency, a victim's medical condition or history, a description of an assailant or other background information in order to properly respond to an emergency call. However, sometimes a caller's condition or situation renders the caller unable or unwilling to verbally provide this information. Under these circumstances, a proper assessment of the emergency may be delayed until the first responder arrives at the site of the emergency. Such a delay may preclude a favorable resolution of emergency.
Some campuses, urban areas and other areas are covered by wireless telephone systems that do not include emergency call systems. In these situations, no location information is automatically available when a caller calls a campus safety, police or other organization to report an emergency. The called organization must rely solely on oral descriptions from the caller regarding the nature and location of each emergency. However, as noted, sometimes the caller is unable or unwilling to provide this information.